Cannes Film Festival to Offer Sexual Harassment Hotline

The Cannes Film Festival is adding a new resource to the world’s biggest annual gathering of movers and shakers in the movie biz next month: an anti-sexual harassment hotline.

The decision to provide this tool to victims or witnesses to report incidents, was made in partnership with French equality minister Marlene Schiappa, following the accusations made by four actresses against Harvey Weinstein, who say the disgraced movie mogul attacked them at the event.

“We have set up a partnership with the Cannes film festival to tackle sexual harassment,” Schiappa told news agency AFP Thursday of the hotline that will be available to attendees of the festival in the French Riviera, which is set to run May 8-19.

“One of the rapes that Harvey Weinstein is accused of happened at Cannes, and so the festival cannot not act,” she said.

Among the four accusations of sexual misconduct posed against Weinstein at the event in recent years was Italian actress Asia Argento’s claim that he raped her in his hotel suite when she was 21 years old.

Schiappa said the hotline is not just meant to protect actresses, but all women working in the film industry.